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Ken Hanson powers to Gastown Grand Prix title (with video)

More than 30,000 spectators lined the streets of Gastown to watch the high speed Grand Prix 2012 race.

VANCOUVER — We don’t know who came up with the phrase, ‘there is power in numbers,’ but it could well have been a competitive cyclist.

With a half-dozen Optum Kelly Benefit Strategies teammates doing the grunt work and setting him up for a sprint finish, favorite Ken Hanson of Santa Barbara, Calif., powered up the historic Water St. cobblestones Wednesday evening to win the reinvigorated Global Relay Gastown Grand Prix.

Canadian strongman Svein Tuft, riding for Australian-based Pro Tour team Orica-GreenEDGE, had about a 20 metre lead with one lap to go on the 1.2-kilometre closed-street circuit.

But he was reeled in by the Optum bunch just after they turned from Carrall onto Water on the 50th lap and Hanson beat Ryan Anderson of Vancouver (Team SpiderTech) to the wire by half a bike length. Australian Tommy Nankervis was another bike length back in third.

“We kind of timed that just so we didn’t do the lead out too early . . . the guys did a great job. I owe the win to the team for sure,” said Hanson, who won the Manhattan Beach, Calif., Criterium on Sunday, the second-oldest one-day race in the U.S.

“Svein had us under pressure all day,” added Hanson of the Langley native, who won Tuesday’s UBC Grand Prix and Friday’s BC Superweek criterium opener in North Delta by making early breaks and building up a huge leads. “Luckily, we had numbers and we played our cards.

“We were confident if it came down to a sprint we had the numbers and the speed. Svein is a guy you can never discount. When he went at the end, he got a good gap, but we kept our cool and brought him back slowly and timed everything perfectly.”

Hanson made sure he was perfectly coiffed for the win, as he was sporting “racing stripes” razored into the side of his head.

“Had it done today. Had it done before in a race in Korea and won two stages in a row. I figured tonight I wanted to go fast, so I put some racing stripes in.”

The win was worth a cool $15,000, the largest cash prize for a criterium in North America.

Hanson noted it will be shared with his six teammates, two of them B.C. boys in Vancouver’s Sebastian Salas and Aldergrove’s March Cooper.

Salas, who won the King of the Mountain jersey at the prestigous Tour of California in May, is getting married on Saturday. Hanson noted there was batchelor party planned for Wednesday night.

“So I don’t know if we’re going to end up with anything after tonight.”

Hanson,30. raced Gastown one other time in 2008 before it folded because of a lack of sponsorship.

The Grand Prix came back with a flourish on Wednesday, with crowds lined up two and three deep behind the fencing and even more than that around the tight corners. Crowd estimates fluctuated between a few thousand and the wildly out there figure of 35,000 advanced by the energetic PA announcer.

But however many were in attendance, they were enthusiastic. And the riders certainly noticed.

“It’s unbelievable,” said Anderson, who came across from the North Shore on the Seabus for the race. “It’s a great night of racing. The crowds are unreal. I’ve done the biggest crits in the U.S. and this is just as big.”

Anderson, who had only one SpiderTech teammate in the race, was just behind the group of Optum riders when they made the last-lap surge.

“They rode a great race. I rode with them a couple of years ago and I knew [Alex] Candelario and the team. They just finished it off great. I’m just going to have to come back next year.”

The women’s race, worth a tidy $8,000 to the winner, was captured by Australian Loren Rowney, 23, in frantic sprint in which she outdueled 47-year-old veteran Laura Van Gilder of Pocono Pines, Penn.

Rowney races for Specialized Lululemon, a 13-rider German-based team that includes Canadian Olympian Clara Hughes. Ten members of that team, which includes riders from six different countries, are in Europe preparing to race in the London Olympics.

Rowney and Gilder, who has reportedly won some 370 races in her long career, both said they had heard so much about Gastown and were delighted to see it back on the schedule and to be able to race it for the first time.

“It was probably the hardest $6,000 to lose today for sure,” said Gilder of the difference between first- and second-place prize money. “But Global Relay did such a fantastic job with raising such a good prize purse for the women. I’ll be looking forward to coming back again.”

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